Previewed at BlizzCon 2011, the Pet Battle System allows most formerly non-combat pets, also known as companions, to become battle pets and battle each other for bragging rights, leveling, and addition of abilities. While this feature was not released until the Mists of Pandaria expansion was released, the expansion will not be required use the pet battle system and will be available to all players.[1]

Contents

Background

For years, your faithful vanity pets have accompanied you on countless adventures. They've provided you with comfort, company, sometimes even with entertainment and hours of fun. Maybe you only have a handful of pets you really love, or maybe you have made it your quest to capture as many of them as you can. The fact remains, heroes love their little companions... and in Mists of Pandaria, they will take the spotlight in a brand-new way.

Information

Companions will now be able to battle each other in a new turn-based combat system to level up and unlock new abilities. Pets will also be able to encounter and battle pets in the wild to capture them for the player.[2] Players will be able to fight with teams of pets up to 3 for each player at a time.[4] Customization, progress status, abilities and info will be tracked in a new Pet Journal.[4]

Example master trainer UI.

Eventually you will be able to seek out new Master Pet Tamer NPCs (were called master pet trainer) to learn new pet abilities from them if your pet is worthy and can defeat the trainer's pet.[2]

Engaging in pet battles may award the player experience similar to gathering professions.[5] Players may disable invites to pet battles.[5]

To get the highest percentage possible of participants, Blizzard has decided that players will not know the identity of players they are fighting against. This is to avoid trash-talking. Another way they are hoping to diminish the negativity involved in some aspects of PvP, they are also only recording wins.[6]

In patch 5.3

Battle pet hit accuracy was changed in Patch 5.3 so that the chance of pets dodging attacks and pets missing is reduced.[7]

A “hit chance” will be listed for all abilities and this value will update if the pet is affected by abilities that increase or reduce the chance to hit

The base 5% chance to dodge will be removed.

The chance to miss opponents of higher levels from 5% per level to 2% per level.

The base 5% chance to gain a critical strike (for 1.5x damage) will remain and +/- 10% damage variance on all abilities.

The following basic attacks have had their damage increased by 5-15% and accuracy reduced by 5-15%:

NPCs

These NPCs teach players Battle Pet Training, granting the ability to fight and capture pets. The training comes with a pet heal/rez spell and the ability to track pets in the world. These trainers can be found in all the racial start zones as well as Orgrimmar and Stormwind. The guards in the capitals can direct you to them as well. Note that this training is account-wide, so you only need to learn it on one character.

These are NPCs for the battle pet questline. You can fight these characters in a pet battle for increased XP, achievements and rewards. Defeating the Grand Master on each continent will unlock daily quests (via an achievement) for all of the other Tamers on that same continent.

Battle pets

Pets (companions) are now account-wide. This means that any pet you have on one character will be shared with all of the others on your Battle.net account. Earn level 6 with Grunty on character A? Log in character B and that level 6 Grunty will be there waiting for you.If you have multiple versions of the same pet on multiple characters on your account, they will be merged into one. We will place any extras in your bags or mail them to you if you are out of space.

Pets are caught via PvE battles in the world. Any pet you can fight, you can catch. In order to catch a pet, you need to get it to low health and use your trap ability. Traps upgrade via specific achievements, improving your chance to catch higher level pets.

Pets that are captured in the world have varying levels of quality, just like an item would. The quality stat is randomly determined every time a pet spawns. Higher quality pets get a larger stat allotment each time you level. Be on the lookout for Rares!

Strengths and Weaknesses

Battle pet abilities

Battle pets will have abilities, just like player characters, but they will be more simplified, generally increase in effect based on battle pet level, and have specific strengths and weaknesses against other battle pet families.

Battles

PvE battles take place in two ways: against NPC trainers and against pets that you can fight in the world. Pet tracking will let you find pets in the world that you can fight and capture. Keep an eye out!

PvP battles also have two varieties. You can choose to duel another player or you can queue up and be matched against another player of similar skill. Note that you do not earn XP for duels.

Pets heal a portion of their health after every fight. The amount healed is 50% of the damage that they took during the fight. You can also full heal all of the pets in your journal with the [Revive Battle Pets]ωϖ spell (10 min cooldown; 3 min warmup after login).[21]

If one of your pets die in battle you can resurrect it using the Revive Battle Pets spell or just find a friendly, neighborhood Stable Master.

Leveling

The XP required to level for pets after level 10 has been dramatically reduced.

Calculating experience

If your pet team prevails in combat, experience is awarded to all surviving pets that participated in combat. Pets that do not enter combat have no effect on the experience awarded. Similarly, pets that die in combat also have no affect on the experience awarded. The experience that dead pets would have received is not "lost". Instead, the system considers dead pets the same way as non-participating pets.

When you defeat an opposing pet, the experience awarded is calculated using this formula:

[opponent level + 9] X [level difference + 5]

The level difference is capped at +2, so there is no benefit to defeating an opponent more than 2 levels higher than your pet. If your pet is 5 or more levels higher than the opponent, it will receieve zero experience.

When your opponent is level 5 or higher, there will be two of them, and you recieve experience for each of them (200% normal experience). When your opponent is level 15 or higher, there will be three of them, and you receive full experience for the first two, and half experience for the third (250% normal experience).

The quality of the defeated pet does not affect experience gain, and you get full experience if you capture or defeat your opponent.

The experience awarded to each surviving pet is calculated by dividing the experience in the table below by the number of surviving pets:

Experience table

Pet level

Experience

-4 level

-3 level

-2 level

-1 level

Same

+1 level

+2 level

1

50

na

na

na

na

50

60

70

2

110

na

na

na

44

55

66

77

3

120

na

na

36

48

60

72

84x2

4

195

na

26

39

52

65

78x2

91x2

5

280

14

28

42

56

70x2

84x2

98x2

6

450

15

30

45

60x2

75x2

90x2

105x2

7

560

16

32

48x2

64x2

80x2

96x2

112x2

8

595

17

34x2

51x2

68x2

85x2

102x2

119x2

9

720

18x2

36x2

54x2

72x2

90x2

108x2

126x2

10

760

19x2

38x2

57x2

76x2

95x2

114x2

133x2

11

900

20x2

40x2

60x2

80x2

100x2

120x2

140x2

12

945

21x2

42x2

63x2

84x2

105x2

126x2

147x2

13

990

22x2

44x2

66x2

88x2

110x2

132x2

154x2.5

14

1150

23x2

46x2

69x2

92x2

115x2

138x2.5

161x2.5

15

1200

24x2

48x2

72x2

96x2

120x2.5

144x2.5

168x2.5

16

1250

25x2

50x2

75x2

100x2.5

125x2.5

150x2.5

175x2.5

17

1430

26x2

52x2

78x2.5

104x2.5

130x2.5

156x2.5

182x2.5

18

1485

27x2

54x2.5

81x2.5

108x2.5

135x2.5

162x2.5

189x2.5

19

1555

28x2.5

56x2.5

84x2.5

112x2.5

140x2.5

168x2.5

196x2.5

20

1595

29x2.5

58x2.5

87x2.5

116x2.5

145x2.5

174x2.5

203x2.5

21

1800

30x2.5

60x2.5

90x2.5

120x2.5

150x2.5

180x2.5

210x2.5

22

1860

31x2.5

62x2.5

93x2.5

124x2.5

155x2.5

186x2.5

217x2.5

23

1920

32x2.5

64x2.5

96x2.5

128x2.5

160x2.5

192x2.5

224x2.5

24

1980

33x2.5

66x2.5

99x2.5

132x2.5

165x2.5

198x2.5

231x2.5

Example 1:
If one of your level 3 pets defeats a level 2 opponent, it will receive 48 experience.

Example 2:
If you have three active pets of level 4, 5, and 9 that all survive a battle against a level 6 opponent, the experience awards would be as follows:

Your level 4 pet would receive (1/3)(91 x 2) = 61 experience.

Your level 5 pet would receive (1/3)(84 x 2) = 56 experience.

Your level 9 pet would receive (1/3)(36 x 2) = 24 experience.

Example 3:
If two of your high level pets die in combat against a level 16 opponent, and your level 12 pet survives, the surviving pet would receive 147x2.5=367 experience.

There are two cases where this table is not accurate:

1) If your pets are different levels, the higher level pet will "steal" a few experience points from the lower level pet. You can ignore this becauswe usually only one or two eperience points are transferred, which is irrelevant.

2) If your pets are different level, at some point the entire team will be penalized. The penalty will be the equivalent of the opponent being one level lower, which is very significant (about 30% reduction in experience). Beyond about level 10, try to keep all of your pets the same level, unless you are power levelling a baby pet, in which case the experience penalty is worth paying.

Leveling tips

Use the trainers and quests: At higher levels the experience grind is very slow. The fastest way to gain experience is to follow the quest line and defeat the trainers. Trainers award much more experience than opponents in the field. This means that you should maximize your experience from trainers, and avoid a situation where you waste the experience boost from lower level trainers by defeating them with a too high level team.

Do not waste time farming for many rare pets at low level: You will often capture the same pet at much higher level, and you will have to abandon the low level rare to make room for the higher level rare.

Plan your high level grind, not your low level grind: The first few levels are easy, it does not matter where you do them. At higher level, find a place with a nearby stable master to grind opponents that are equal or slightly weaker. The stable master is very important because higher level opponents will leave your team very weak, and you do not want to have to wait 8 minutes between each combat. For example, Winterspring is a good place to grind level 17 to 21 because there are many high level opponents available near to the Everlook stable master. Another good strategy is to grind using a herbalist and/or a miner, because you can make gold while you wait for the 8 minute cooldown.

Also while in the healing cooldown, don't be afraid to trade out the hurt pets for another one you intend to level later, then when you can heal, it heals all of your pets whether active or not. This way there isn't as much down time.

Pets are currently healing to full health after a battle. This is a known bug and hotfix planned soon.

Pre-existing pets have no stats. Any pets that you acquire new are fine. This is also a bug to be hotifxed soon.

In certain cases, starting a pet battle with a creature in the world will report an error about the pet being currently in battle, or that the account is locked. Both of these are hopefully on the hotfix list.

Some pets will be missing abilites, ability FX or animations.

The questline is very much work-in-progress.

The XP curve being tuned so any feedback on this is appreciated.

Spawn rates on pets in the world are WIP. Feedback on this is appreciated.

An issue where players are sometimes losing a battle slot. A relog should fix the problem.

Upcoming in Beta

One Grand Master Tamer per continent. Defeating him/her will unlock all the daily's on that continent.

The flow has been consolidated to work though our two main trainers in Stormwind and Orgrimmar.

We have implemented more than 40 Tamer fights across the entire game. This does not include the boss fights!

Daily quests on Grand Master Tamers offer the Sack of Pet Supplies as a reward.

A new achievement reward for defeating all the Tamers. A "Tamer" title.

All of the quests to fight Tamers are now account-wide. This means that the one-shot quests can only be completed by one character on your account. The daily's can be completed by any character, once per day. Account wide quests are denoted in the quest log.

^ abMumper (Cory Stockton) 2012-07-22. #8 - Comments: AH effect on Pet Battles and D3. Official Mists of Pandaria Beta > Beta Pet Battles forum (US). We just finished a pass making all pets that are caught via pet battles in the world non-tradeable. This means these pets cannot be put in cages for trading or posting on the AH. We felt that the option to buy these pets on the AH would take away from the exploration/collection gameplay of the system.

This could always change in a future patch, but this is how it will go out with MoP. You should see the change in our next build. (After build 15882.)